A/N: Your reviews are wonderful :D Thanks you all very, very, very much.
Chapter Two: Help
For the second time of that day, Galinda regained her senses on a bed. Needless to say, she was in a clinic ward, staring up at the whitewashed ceiling. She could smell the whippets of medical alcohol in the air along with the lavender air freshener.
Her head felt as though it was bundled in dizzying knots. Her knees felt sore as well, still suffering from the heavy blow of the marble floor she had first pressed her weight against when she fell.
As if on cue, a nurse garbed in a white uniform stepped next to the bed.
"How are you feeling, Miss Galinda?" she asked gently. She strangely had an aura of a young mother around her.
"Head hurts," Galinda found herself groaning at her like a drugged patient.
The nurse had drawn a chair next to her bed and sat on it. "I just escorted your friends to the door," she said, "Miss Pfanee and Miss ShenShen had been by your side for about half an hour now. But they need to attend their classes, of course. Forgive me if I sent them away."
Galinda could only nod, dimly relishing the slight heat her head had produced from its friction with the soft pillow. She directed her eyes to the ceiling, feeling a dreadful cold crawl up at her spine when she remembered why she was brought there in the first place.
Elphaba was dead.
She had been dead for over a month, and according to Pfanee, Galinda had been not right for weeks.
What happened to me? Galinda couldn't help but wonder, deeply annoyed with herself too, Why couldn't I remember something that important? Where have my memories gone?... And if she's really dead, why am I seeing her? Why am I even talking to someone who's not really there—
What's wrong with me?!
And then the crash of the small vial in her room hours ago hauntingly rebounded in her ears. What did it contain? Had she been drinking its contents to sleep on the night before? Did it somehow tamper with her memories and trashed her brain so badly that she began seeing dead people?
"What happened today?" the nurse asked. Her tone alone suggested that this was not the first time Galinda had been in the clinic for unusual incidences.
Was her mind broken? Had Elphaba's untimely death damaged something so severely that it affected her so much? She can't even feel anything but dread at the prospect of communicating with a supposed deceased person. There was no mourning pall, no depressing tears, no emotional breakdown.
She couldn't bring herself to tell the nurse. She didn't have to hear how ravaged her messed up brain was.
The nurse sighed consolingly. "Maybe another three days worth of rest will do you some good, Miss Galinda," she said, making the blonde contract uncomfortably at the reminder of how much she couldn't remember, "The doctor's on a medical mission in Munchkinland, but I'm very sure he would like to remind you of the necessary precautions needed to…"
Galinda chose to tune out of the talk. It was a subconscious talent she had acquired to save herself from total boredom at lectures. All these mentions of the time that had passed made her feel utterly miserable and out of place—
She felt her breath cease to an almost complete stop.
She finally averted her eyes from the ceiling, and what she saw took all the air and blood from her system.
Elphaba, green as ever, was casually leaning against the doorframe of the ward, her arms crossed, taking in the scene before her with passive indifference.
Galinda immediately snapped her eyes shut. Not again. Not now. You're not here, you're not here, you're not here! You're dead. You're gone. You're not supposed to be here…
When she looked again, things had gone worse. Elphaba was standing beside the bed, staring down at her with the same empty and lost look that had bothered Galinda all morning. The blonde had always thought that her roommate's angry face was the scariest expression in the world, but Elphaba's blank stare now proved otherwise. She could practically feel a chilling aura of death emanating from the green girl.
"Miss Galinda, are you all right?" the nurse asked from Galinda's other side, "You're looking pale."
Galinda threw her head to the other side to face the nurse completely, determined to look as calm and composed as she could while trying to ignore the silent phantom observing her. "I'm… I'm fine, thanks…" she sputtered fervently, "May I leave now?" From her peripheral vision, she could still see Elphaba's rigid form.
"Miss Galinda, you're—"
"Please?" Galinda said urgently, sitting up amidst her head's protestations, "I have to… um, catch up with some schoolwork in my room. I'll be stacked with them if I won't do anything about them soon."
The nurse looked hesitant at the prospect of letting her go on her own, but she eventually gave in.
Galinda dared to look behind her. Elphaba was gone.
Galinda sped to her room as fast she could in her heels.
With all her might, she distanced herself from the clinic with increasing dread.
She'd sat by the nurse's station for a good long minute as the young nurse jotted down notes for necessary medications (none of which Galinda will bother to take, of course). All the while she sat there, she felt like she must've casted her eyes on every corner of the room in order to avoid looking at the dead girl who was seemingly stalking her.
Elphaba's mute specter had been standing behind the nurse. From her daring glances, Galinda saw that she was reading whatever the nurse was scribbling away. The thought piqued her interests somewhat, since she never knew that ghosts would bother to read drug prescriptions. But all the same, she liked the idea of Elphaba looking at other things instead of her.
After that, without even lingering to hear the nurse's final instructions, Galinda simply fled, leaving her haunting tormentor behind.
Why is she following me? Galinda wondered vaguely as she barreled up the stairs of the dorms, glancing furtively behind her to see if she was being followed. Seeing none (to her immense relief), she ruminated some more, What's up with that? Why me, of all the people here at Shiz! There are hundreds of girls to choose from and she picked to haunt me? Dead or not, that's totally unfair!
She skidded to a halt in front of her room.
Her room. Formerly, their room. Not anymore.
She madly fumbled with her coat pockets to look for the key, feeling the unpleasant sensation of the hair on the back of her neck standing up. She didn't dare look up no matter what. She deliberately trained her vision on the brass knob and its keyhole.
She jammed the key onto the wooden door, and rushed in once it had opened. She then threw her weight on it, slamming the thing shut with a loud snapping sound.
It was still around noon. The golden lights of midday had been giving the room a glowing look.
Galinda remained where she was, her back pressed against the door as if she was part of it. She slowly took in the appearance of her surroundings. She had expected to see a looming specter of emerald and dark blue lurking somewhere, waiting for her return.
Finding the room completely devoid of Elphaba, Galinda cautiously made her way to her bed.
Her heels clicked on the wooden floor, filling the room with its rhythmic sounds. Everything else was quiet. It was eerie in an uncertain way. In that moment, she was the only one in the dorms since classes are progressing.
The idea of being alone (Perhaps not entirely alone, Galinda thought ruefully) was highly unnerving. Her senses seemed to have been sharpened ten times than usual, particularly her hearing. She picked up every sound available in her surroundings with great detail.
She glanced at Elphaba's untouched bed. She shuddered involuntarily.
Unceremoniously tossing her bag to the corner near her, she dejectedly dropped herself on her floppy bed.
And then her heart stopped, and before she knew it, she was screaming her head off.
Elphaba was there again, standing right in front of her.
Galinda dove to her pillow, her shrieks being muffled as she stuffed the soft object to her face.
"Leave me alone!" she screamed, her eyes squeezed shut against the pillow, "Just leave me alone! Oz—What do you want from me?!"
"Oh please," she heard the ghost drone on next to her bed, "Shut up. I'm not deaf, you know?"
Galinda couldn't help but shiver. The dead is talking to me—Oh my Oz! What have I done to deserve this? "Go away!" she screamed, "You're not real! I'm dreaming!"
"If this is a dream, so help me, Galinda, I will force you to wake up," Elphaba said, curiously sounding as though she was bored, "Honestly, who would want to dream of me?"
At that, Galinda found herself instantaneously shushed. That's the exact thing she would expect to hear from Elphaba's lips.
Could it be?
Galinda slowly raised her head from the pillow, mustering all the courage she ever possessed to look up at Elphaba.
The green girl looked as she was that morning. Ever so stiff, ever so neutral in terms of expressions. But for some reason, the way she had talked suggested that she sounded much more alive than she was before. The eyes, which were Galinda's point of focus, still retained the same lifeless gleam.
"Are you really… you know, dead?" Galinda asked. She mentally kicked when she realized that her inquiry sounded too forward and intrusive. It even appealed to her as childish.
Elphaba actually snorted derisively. "Does this look alive to you?" she said, lamely waving her arms.
Galinda bit her lip and hugged the pillow to her chest, sitting on her heels and rocking back and forth slowly. "I don't understand," she admitted, her tense muscles beginning to relax as she steadily gained a strange air of calmness, "How did it happen?"
Elphaba shrugged. "I don't know," she replied without much emotion at all.
Galinda frowned. "You don't know how you died?" she asked, making her realize how blatantly rude she was. She was curious anyway. And it seemed as though Elphaba sounded unfazed with her own demise.
"I was actually hoping that you do," Elphaba replied nonchalantly.
"Is that why you're following me?" Galinda found herself asking again, a sense of annoyance creeping in her words, "You think I know? I can't even remember what happened to me!"
Elphaba looked thoroughly unconcerned about it that it annoyed her further. But then again, Galinda reasoned that maybe her face wasn't trying to work up a look that would pass for empathy at all since the living Elphaba seemed to be unfamiliar with such emotions as well.
"They can't see me. You can, for some reason," Elphaba said, "As for your memory, I don't know the answer to that either. Unless, of course, it had simply gotten worse than before."
Is Elphaba insinuating that I had— have—a weak memory? Galinda thought grudgingly, her fear for the specter disappearing fast. She was beginning to revert to her initial feelings for the green girl because of the subtle rudeness she was detecting.
And then their conversation earlier that day jumped to her mind:
Why are you still here?
Honestly, Galinda, I don't know.
She looked up at Elphaba. "Why are you still here?" she reiterated. The meaning of the question had a different point of view now.
"I told you," Elphaba explained, "I don't know."
"Well…" Galinda pondered, summing up the pieces, "You're stuck here but you're not supposed to be. My memories are somewhat broken, and you can't remember how you died. I might be a little insane. Only I could see you—for now, at least—Hey, I think they're all connected."
"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Elphaba said, a hint of sarcasm lingering in her tone, "You think I didn't thought of that?"
"Hey, I'm trying to help here," Galinda grumbled, letting her chin drop on the pillow in her arms, "This may be totally absurd, but it seems we need to… urgh… work together on this one."
"Oh joy," Elphaba deadpans.
"You're not being helpful at all," Galinda said, deeply annoyed.
In her anger, she abruptly threw the pillow at Elphaba. It went through her and landed on the bed behind her. Elphaba looked unbothered with it. The green girl didn't even blink as the aforementioned object sailed harmlessly through her nonexistent body.
"I can see how fun this all going to turn out to be," she said with some amusement, "I can imagine things flying at me every day, and they'll just pass right through. Nice, indeed."
"Oh come on!" Galinda snapped, though she would have loved the idea of pitching various stuff at Elphaba at the moment, "We both need to complete something, and since it seems that I'm the only who can help you, you need to help me in return!"
Elphaba stared at her for a while before shrugging. "Might as well," she said, agreeing readily.
"It's settled, then," Galinda concluded, her headache returning, tugging at her brain, "Just… Just let me rest for a while. We'll talk more of this when I have enough energy to do so. Hand me the pillow, will you?"
Elphaba smirked openly, taking Galinda by surprise. It was the first time she ever saw her roommate make such a face. She would've loved seeing it if she were alive. As deliciously rare and uncharacteristic it was, the expression was missing the malicious glint in the eyes. Galinda had long realized that Elphaba's eyes were the measure of the reality of her existence.
"I've always known how dreadful your memory is," she said with mild taunting, "Perhaps you're forgetting that I can't handle things. Perhaps you're forgetting that I'm dead."
"I hate you, really," Galinda grumbled as marched from her bed to the other one, "You're insufferable."
She grabbed the pillow and tossed it on her bed before throwing herself onto it.
She couldn't see Elphaba now as she eased herself to sleep, but she was certain that her green roommate was lingering somewhere next to her.
She couldn't see her, yes, but the heavy feeling of her presence gave Galinda all the assurance she needed to believe that Elphaba was not completely gone from this world. Not yet, anyway.
A/N: …Debating whether or not coffee is considered a drug.
It's damn addicting, and thanks to several cups, I'm steadily becoming a night creature. WTF.
Anyway, what do you all think?